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Hanan Yovel
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The profile · researched 31 October 2026
Hanan Yovel at 80: six decades of Hebrew song, three musicians and one full hall
Hanan Yovel has been on Israeli stages since 1965, first in the Nahal troupe, then in HaShlosharim, then across a dozen solo albums of his own settings of Hebrew poetry. On 19 November 2026 a hall of guest singers marks his eightieth birthday at Heichal HaTarbut in Tel Aviv.
Mishmarot, a classical guitar, and the Nahal troupe
Yovel was born Hanan Bulyavsky on 3 October 1946 at Kibbutz Mishmarot, into one of the founding families, his parents' line running back to Latvia and Ukraine. He picked up the guitar after his bar mitzvah and later studied classical guitar in Tel Aviv, which is part of why his shows have never needed a large band behind them.
The losses came early and he has only recently written about them. His father died when he was nine. A sister, Yael, appears with him and their parents in a family photograph taken when he was an infant, and died soon after it was taken; that photograph became the subject of a song in 2022.
He was conscripted in 1965 into the Nahal entertainment troupe, the standard route into Israeli popular music for his generation, and served alongside Shalom Hanoch. The two have kept crossing paths for sixty years, including on the bill for his eightieth-birthday concert.
HaShlosharim, then a solo catalogue
Out of the army, Yovel joined HaShlosharim with Beni Amdursky and Shalom Hanoch, a short-lived trio that ran through 1969 and 1970 and in which he sang lead on "Tzarot Tovot". The three reunited in 1991 for the album "Al Gesher HaYarkon".
His solo run began with a self-titled album in 1974. "Atem Zochrim et HaShirim" is the song that has followed him ever since, and it gave its name to a 1977 album. The rest of the catalogue runs through "Ozem Einayim veShar" (1976), "HaKuskus veHaSarafan" (1982, made with Dodo Elharar), "Dor" (1985), "Emtza HaHayim" (1987), "KesheHaYonim Chozrot" (1989), "HaKol Diburim" (1990), "BaOrot Gvohim" (1992), "Ze Atah" (1998) and "Siddur Ishi" (2009).
Much of the work is composition rather than authorship: Yovel sets other people's Hebrew, including poems by Rachel the poetess, and has written melodies that other singers carried. He told Calcalist in June 2025 that none of it was planned — "I never planned my life as a singer, certainly not as a composer, but somehow I ended up there" — and credited Ehud Manor with pushing him back to writing in 1981, a turn he treats as the one that mattered most.
The 2022 EP, and a late writing stretch
In March 2022 he released "Tmuna meAlbum Yashan", his music to a Yonatan Gefen lyric, as the lead single from a seven-track EP that followed after Passover. Working on Gefen's words sent him back to the family photograph of his parents, his sister Yael and himself as a baby; he described the melody as moving between sweetness and mystery, and the family in it as both a warm home and an open wound.
The EP drew on a spread of lyricists, with "Erev Kayitz Ham" set to Meir Ariel, "Kayitz shel Nechamot" to Roni Eran and "Pnei Yeled" to Lea Shnir. Those newer songs now sit in his live set next to material forty and fifty years older.
Collaboration has stayed the pattern. In 2017 he formed "Shloshtenu" with Dorit Reuveni and Uri Harpaz; both appear at the November 2026 concert. His daughter Shira Yovel has performed with him since the 1994 Song Festival and is also on that bill.
Prizes, and the invitation he turned down
The institutional recognition has stacked up over the past decade: the ACUM lifetime achievement award in 2018; the Minister of Culture's Arik Einstein prize for veteran artists in the Hebrew song category in 2021; an honour from Bar-Ilan University in May 2022; a lifetime achievement declaration from the Artists' Union in March 2024, the same year Kiryat Ono named him its person of the year; and a pioneers' award in June 2024. In June 2026 the B'nai B'rith World Center announced a citation for his work connecting Israel and Jewish communities abroad through music.
He is also one of the few veteran performers to have made a public refusal stick. On 25 February 2023 he declined an invitation to sing at the Knesset on Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, naming coalition members whose conduct he objected to and saying: "To sing there before these boorish people is to be untrue to myself." He added: "They say the people are the sovereign, but they do not respect the people. Why should I respect them?" and, of the parliament itself, "This is not my Knesset."
Speaking to Calcalist in June 2025 he was still sore about the aftermath — "I worked my entire life to build a good name and then vandals destroy it in seconds" — while noting that the row with Dudi Amsalem ended up selling him more tickets than it cost him.
Where he stands in 2026
Yovel has spent the past two years working as much outside his own club dates as inside them. On 21 October 2025 he was the guest singer at the opening concert of Project HaTikva in Tel Aviv, a series created by Dr Sharon Azrieli for the Azrieli Foundation to mark the second anniversary of 7 October 2023; the Ra'anana Symphonette and the Israel Philharmonic Youth Orchestra played, tickets were held at NIS 25, and the run took in eleven Israeli orchestras across Jerusalem, Ashdod, Rehovot, Netanya, Be'er Sheva, Carmiel and Kiryat Gat between 21 and 28 October. His own compositions sat in the programme alongside Ben-Haim, Avni and Kopitman.
The year's fixed point is 19 November 2026, when "HaLaila Hu Shirim" fills the Lowy Hall at Heichal HaTarbut in Tel Aviv at 20:30 for his eightieth birthday. Yair Nitzani hosts, Ohad Ben-Avi handles musical direction and Dalit Ofer curated the programme, which is built entirely from songs Yovel wrote or sang across more than six decades. Shlomo Artzi, Shalom Hanoch, Rivka Michaeli, Asaf Amdursky, Ethnix, Dorit Reuveni, Uri Harpaz, Dani Basan, Daniel Weiss, HaGevatron, Maya Belsitzman, Nono, Eli Botner and his band, Raz Shmueli, Ella Hem Banai and Shira Yovel are all announced. Maariv reported the line-up on 23 September 2026; it is a seated show, with doors ninety minutes early and latecomers placed where there is room.
Alongside that he has kept the smaller work going: a jazz festival piece with the composer Amikam Kimelman, and the continuing "Yovel veChetzi" nights at Gray in Tel Aviv. He is blunt about why he carries on at this volume. "All the songs I participate in creating through composition or performance will remain here even after I'm gone."
The show as it runs now
The touring format he settled on in May 2022 is called "Yovel veChetzi" — Yovel and a half — and it is deliberately small: Yovel and three musicians, with musical direction and arrangements by Eran Zilberbach, Noa Waks on percussion and Shavit Drummer on guitars. There is no production to speak of, which puts the weight on the songs and on his talk between them.
The set threads his own material through his readings of other people's. "Atem Zochrim et HaShirim", "Pgisha Chetzi Pgisha", "Ve'im HaShir HaZeh Nishma Lachem Mukar", "SheHaShemesh Ta'avor Alai", "Ani veShimon veMoiz HaKatan" and "HaLaila Hu Shirim" sit next to "Leil Chanaya", "Shir HaMa'alot" and "Yamim shel Binyamin", with the 2022 songs "Erev Kayitz Ham" and "Kol Mila" worked in.
Guests are the variable. The Gray nights have been built around a different singer each time, with Ehud Banai and Eli Botner among those who have taken the slot, and a 2024 edition given over to Dorit Reuveni. The November 2026 tribute is the opposite arrangement — one subject, sixteen guests, and a host.
The show, now
Two formats are running in parallel. The regular one, "Yovel veChetzi", has been his touring show since May 2022: Yovel with three musicians — Eran Zilberbach on musical direction and arrangements, Noa Waks on percussion, Shavit Drummer on guitars — playing club rooms such as Gray in Tel Aviv with no staging beyond the band, and a rotating guest singer who has at various points been Ehud Banai, Eli Botner or, in a 2024 edition, Dorit Reuveni. The set runs his own songs ("Atem Zochrim et HaShirim", "Pgisha Chetzi Pgisha", "SheHaShemesh Ta'avor Alai", "Ani veShimon veMoiz HaKatan", "HaLaila Hu Shirim") against his readings of "Leil Chanaya", "Shir HaMa'alot" and "Yamim shel Binyamin", with the 2022 material — "Erev Kayitz Ham", "Kol Mila" — mixed in. The single date currently on sale is the other format: "HaLaila Hu Shirim" at the Lowy Hall, Heichal HaTarbut, Tel Aviv, on 19 November 2026 at 20:30, a seated eightieth-birthday concert hosted by Yair Nitzani with musical direction by Ohad Ben-Avi and a programme curated by Dalit Ofer, drawn only from songs Yovel wrote or performed. Announced guests are Shlomo Artzi, Shalom Hanoch, Rivka Michaeli, Asaf Amdursky, Ethnix, Dorit Reuveni, Uri Harpaz, Dani Basan, Daniel Weiss, HaGevatron, Maya Belsitzman, Nono, Eli Botner and band, Raz Shmueli, Ella Hem Banai and his daughter Shira Yovel. Doors open ninety minutes before the start and latecomers are seated as space allows. No published critical reviews of the current shows were found; the clearest read on demand is Yovel's own, that the 2023 political row over his refusal to sing at the Knesset pushed his ticket sales up rather than down.
Researched from he.wikipedia.org · timesofisrael.com · calcalist.co.il · maariv.co.il · maariv.co.il · hatarbut.co.il · ticketmaster.co.il · habama.co.il